The Kingdom of the Crystal Shit.

Uploaded 12/31/2008

So I was bored and decided to watch Raiders of the Lost Ark on DVD. Great movie. It got me to thinking about The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and what an utter disappointment it was. I came to the conclusion that Spielberg and Lucas have come full circle. With Raiders they created both the summer blockbuster and the treasure seeking period adventure genre. With Kingdom they pretty much beat it to a pulp, dragged it away kicking and screaming and buried it in an unmarked grave. Now I have to admit that I not only went to see Kingdom (The midnight showing nonetheless.) but I bought it on Blu Ray DVD also. Why? Well, I went to go see it because it was Indy 4. A movie most hard core fans have been waiting forwellit seems like forever. But why did I buy it on Blu-Ray? Because it was INDY 4! If you arent a fan of the original movies then you wont understand. Its like buying On Her Majestys Secret Service if you are a diehard James Bond fan. You have to complete the series!

Anyway, back to Kingdom. First the good: (Not great just good.) I remember thinking how cool it was that they showed the Ark from Raiders. Watching the extras on the DVD I found out they used the exact same Ark prop from Raiders that the Lucasfilm Archives lent them. Little did I know THAT was going to be the highlight of the film. In the scene in the graveyard with Mutt (More on him later.), Indy sticks his hand in a hole to pull a rope. It was pretty much the same scene from The Temple of Doom. The only difference is that in Temple it was a lever and not a rope. Then Indy crawls across the big dial thing. In Temple there was another great trap scene. Great! I thought another patented Indy trap! Nope! Just a dumb pivoting table. Which I might add was seen earlier in an Indiana Jones knock off: National Treasure 2 with a better payoff. Irony IS Nick Cage. Why did I bring these things up? Because it seems like a watered down TV version of Indy. Its the same crap you can find on the Hallmark channel with Noah Wylie as The Janitoror whatever the fuck its called. Its like someone described what happened in the last three Indy flicks to the guy who wrote this. And Holy Shit! The guy who wrote it was George Lucas! And dont even get me started on aliens! Really?!? Thats the best you could come up after almost 20 years! Fuck me! In the extras on the DVD Spielberg says he really didnt want to do another alien movie since he did E.T. and Close Encounters of the Third Kind and George had to talk him into it. SHIT! He should have held out for a better storylike Bigfootor Giant Two Headed Fuck Monsters!

When I heard that Shia LeBeouf was going to be in it, the first thing I thought was: They are going to have him be Indys son. And sure as shit: T a-dah! That flushing sound is originality going right down the crapper. WTF? Are you telling me that the best that the greatest action adventure/sci-fi director of the last 25 years AND the guy who created Star Wars came up with was aliens and a crappy knock off copy of Marlon Brando? I know no great work of blogging (Or this one either.) should ever close with a paraphrase from South Park but I have to agree with them.